I have decided that I am going to try and focus more on Valley State University and less on the city of Valley City. To me it seems that doing this paper on VCSU will be much easier as there are not as many people that were giving out information to the faculty, staff, and students. I feel that the faculty and staff ant VCSU were very good at getting out the information that everybody needed to know during the flood fighting effort and what was going to happen afterwards. Also I feel that the teachers were very accommodating to the students with how assignments were going to be done and how they would be turned in. Also the teachers were very accommodating with the students that I have talked to that do not have easy access to the internet to complete the assignments that were given out.
I feel that Dr. Shirley did an excellent job of making sure that everyone knew what was going on and making time available to the students so that they could go and help sandbag and with other parts of the flood fighting effort. The faculty and staff were very reasonable about canceling class during this crisis and that made it a lot easier to help with the effort that was put forth to fight this flood. By allowing the students to help out it also had a very positive reflection on VCSU and the students that go to school there. I heard lots of people talking about how much they appreciated the effort that was put forth from the VCSU students during this flood. I am sure that many of the people that were involved in this flood will remember the effort that was made by everyone to fight this flood and keeping it from doing much damage to Valley City.
One thing that will help with writing this paper is that I still have all of the emails that were sent out to the students about what would be happening with classes and the flood fighting. These emails were a very good source of communication between the staff and the students. Also the text messages that were sent out to the students that were on that program would have been helpful in knowing what was going on during this flood. To me it seems that everyone at VCSU did an excellent job of notifying people of what was going on.

For this blog we are supposed to write about our communication crisis research paper. I am going to do my research paper either on Valley City or on Valley City State University. This is the only time that I have ever had to deal with any major flooding and it has taught me some valuable lessons about what should be done in order to make things go smoothly with the public. In times of crisis it is very important to get your messages out quickly and that they can be easily understood by the public that needs to hear and understand them. The closest I have come to any kind of flooding before was when Lake Metigoshe got really high and flooded some basements, but that did not require the crisis communications that have been required this year across the whole state. The people of Valley City seemed to have the communications process down fairly well and got messages out to people fairly quickly and they were pretty clear as to what they wanted from the people in the area to do. One thing that I thought was really effective is that the city and the Valley City State University campus worked together and this seemed to help get the word out through emails to the students so that they knew where they were needed and could help when they had the time. Another thing that was used well was the emergency whistle in town. By using the whistle it let the citizens of Valley City know that there help was needed again and they should meet at the winter show building and help sandbag. Also the morning meetings with the officials from the different groups that were involved what was going on and the citizens was a very good idea because people could bring up their concerns about what was happening and what was yet to come. I felt the Dr. Steven Shirley did an excellent job of making sure that the staff and students were notified of what was going on and what was happening around the community and campus. Also I think that the campus was very accommodating to the students so that they could assist in the sandbagging effort and communicating with the students about what was going to happen with classes for the days during the sandbagging effort. Also they have been very helpful in assisting the students since campus has been closed.

The other day I was at work and one of my co workers came in and was talking about this plane that was flying low over New York City and the panic that it had caused. I went on the internet and looked up what was going on and found that Air Force One was flown low over New York City for a photo op. When I found out that this was never announced to the public I thought that if was very disappointing the amount of thought that went in to this idea. The panic that was caused by this stunt was not very good considering what happened the last time planes flew that low over New York City. A press release could have stopped all of the panic that this idea caused. Just think of what the people in those office buildings thought when they saw those planes coming at them. All of those people must have been pretty scared because all of the footage I found showed people evacuating buildings and running down the streets. All of this panic and terror could have been avoided if a little common sense would have been used and implemented. By not informing the public of this going on they created a major crisis for some people that could very easily been avoided with a little effort on their part. First off they could have taken out adds in all the newspapers announcing their plan a couple of weeks before they flew over. Next they could have gotten spots on the radio stations and played an advertisement over the air talking about what was going to happen and they could have gone on some talk shows announcing this idea. They also could have run ads on the television announcing what they were going to do and they could have gotten interviewed on the news channels. They also could have mailed out some sort of flyer to people and let them know what was going on and in what areas it would be going on in. Now by not doing any of the things I mentioned above they have to play clean up with all the people that they scared. If a little time and effort would have been taken most if not all of this mess would never have happened and the people of New York would not have to relive the nightmare of September 11th over again.

As I was reading through some articles on the internet this morning I came across an interesting article about how a police chief in Montana was charged with shooting moose illegally. This guy took his fourteen year old adopted son hunting on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, where they shot four moose. Neither the police chief or his son are tribal members of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, but the son was born on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Indian Reservation hear in North Dakota. Since they are not tribal members they would be required to buy a tribal liscense to hunt there which they did not do. Also they shot the moose on July 4th when the season is closed. When he was charged with shooting the moose he actually offered the game wardens a moose burger at the police station. Not only is it disappointing that they shot the moose out of season where they were not supposed to be hunting, but he is a police chief and he also is not being a good role model for his adopted son. I hope that they throw the book at him for shooting those moose, and I hope that he looses his job because he obviously does not have much regard for the law. Because of people doing things like this it makes all hunters look bad because this type of thing makes the news, but the good things that hunters do very seldom make the news. It is very disappointing that this is what makes the news when there are so many more positive things that hunters do, for example the hunters feeding the hungry programs where hunters donate the meat from animals that they harvest and might not eat all of it themselves.

One thing that stood out to me about this article is that it was short and to the point which was good considering the way that the article was written. The first thing that I noticed is that the writer misspelled the name of the town where this guy was the police chief which is Poplar, Montana. In the first sentence of the article the author spelled the name of the town as Polar, Montana. If this article would have been any longer than it was I probably would not have read any more of it after seeing that mistake in the first sentence.

Here is the link to this article: http://www.kxmc.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=344108

A Public Relations Disaster?

I have donated to Ducks Unlimited for quite a few years now and I could never figure out why a lot of duck hunters are against Ducks Unlimited. I always thought that the dollars raised by Ducks Unlimited went into the conservation and the land purchased by them was open to public hunting and would stay that way forever. Well this is not so, the last time I was home I was talking to some fellow hunters that told me that they would no longer be supporting Ducks Unlimited. I asked them why and they told me that when Ducks Unlimited buys land they restore it and sell it to the highest bidder. After this happens the land that was purchased with our donations is closed to hunting and is a private hunting reserve for the highest bidder.

Here is a link to Ducks Unlimited land auctions: http://prairie.ducks.org/index.cfm?&page=/cld/listings.html

Earlier this year Ducks Unlimited tried to buy some more land in Kidder County, North Dakota. The purchase was denied by Governor Hoeven, because of North Dakota corporate farming laws nonprofit organizations have to go through a process in which they must first go through the county commission, then through the Natural Areas Acquisition Advisory Commission. Both of these groups then make their recommendations to the governor who then has the final say on whether or not the property may be sold. On February 16th Ducks Unlimited released an article about how this law is unfair to them and about how they pay property taxes just like any other property owners. Another part of this article is about how they help local ranchers out because they let the ranchers rent out the grassland out at a fair market value. What they fail to tell you is that when they are done with their restoration project that they will put up for auction, which they did have a prior press release stating that this was their plan from the beginning but I cannot find it anymore.

Here is a link to the Ducks Unlimited press release: http://www.ducks.org/states/21/news/pub/article1768.html

Now I am beginning to understand where people are coming from when they say that they will not support Ducks Unlimited anymore. Now it seems that the more people I talk to are saying that they will no longer be supporting Ducks Unlimited. So now I am not sure if I will donate anymore money to Ducks Unlimited until they change their ways. I also wonder how many supporters this is going to cost Ducks Unlimited.

My 1st blog
What I am going to write about is HB 1211 which is a bill that would require the address or telephone number in addition to the name on all posted signs. I have two problems with this bill that I feel all sportsmen should be aware of.

First of all property does not need to be posted to no hunting, fishing, or trespassing in North Dakota. If a landowner or authorized agent tells an individual to leave the property and that individual does not leave the property then the landowner or authorized agent can call the local law enforcement and press charges against the individual that is trespassing. In North Dakota criminal trespass is a class B misdemeanor, and is a class A misdemeanor if an individual is convicted of criminal trespass within two years of the first offense. These laws are clearly defined in the 2007 amendments to the North Dakota Century Code.

The second issue I have is the issue of property owner rights. I feel that North Dakota sportsmen are lucky to have things the way they are here, two of our neighboring states have laws that make all property closed unless otherwise posted open to public access. If people keep trying to get bills like this passed property owners could get upset and push for legislation to make laws similar to the laws in South Dakota and Montana. I have heard that there are a lot of problems with trespass in these states because people get confused and end up on the wrong property, and personally I would prefer these types of laws to not be enacted in North Dakota. Also there are a lot of landowners that do not put their telephone and addresses on posted signs because they don’t like to be bothered by people that are not willing to put in the time and effort to find them and get permission to be on their property. Their reasoning for this is that they feel that someone that will put in the time and effort to look up their telephone number or address are going to take good care of their property.

I feel that people need to be aware of the laws and also respect the rights of landowners. This bill failed the house on January 29th by a six to five vote in the house natural resource committee. In closing I just want to say that a little respect can go a long way in landowner and sportsmen relations.